IE8 and Vista SP2

We received an interesting question in yesterday's IE Expert Zone chat: now that Vista SP2 is available, will users who installed IE8 before installing SP2 be able to uninstall IE8 without first uninstalling Vista SP2?

The question was prompted by a limitation present in Windows XP; on XPSP2, if you first installed IE8, then installed XPSP3, you would first have to uninstall SP3 in order to uninstall IE8.

I'm happy to report that this uninstall dance isn't required for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.  On those platforms, we use a different installation technology called Component Based Servicing (CBS). CBS allows us to install and uninstall IE8 independently of the operating system service pack.

Of course, we hope you have no reason to ever want to uninstall IE8, and I hope that anyone contemplating an uninstall will check out my Troubleshooting IE tips first!

-EricLaw

PS: To answer some of the questions that folks had on this post:

1> No, you are not required to install IE8 in order to to install Vista SP2.
2> No, Vista SP2 does not itself include IE8.  If you have Vista SP1 with IE7 and install Vista SP2, you will still have IE7 until you specifically install IE8.